older shit

Branes

The Antidote

However, ” The majority would rather douse their dicks with lighter fluid, strike a match, and dance around singing “Disco Inferno” than pay one more cent in taxes to Uncle Sugar.” is a phrase that fucking SINGS, Jerry. That kind of word-bangery is why he gets the big bucks.

“Scrooge changed his tune after the ghosts visited him. Marie Antoinette, on the other hand, lost her head.”

It’s all stupid and false. Funding a government is a collective action problem. You can’t ask people who are so disposed to volunteer to pay more. That doesn’t work – you can’t budget, and they can’t target.

A mature society determines what services they expect from government, then stands up and takes responsibility for funding those services. America is so deeply broken, with people demanding the right to take advantage of government services without paying for them, and no institutions supporting the people who generate the actual GDP. If you can come up with a better definition of unsustainable, I’d like to hear it…

Interestingly, Wife Sublime was watching a 60 minutes tonight that did a story on an Oregon initiative to tax income over 400K a measely 5%. On just the income over 400K, so if you make half a mill, you pay 5000 bucks. For schools.

Bill Gates and his dad both supported the initiative, even if it was going to cost them millions. They are not exactly stingy with their money, but recognize that without collective action, it doesn’t get where it is needed.

Of course, the initiative was falsely represented in massive tv ads (that I suspect cost more than the tax would have collected from the people paying for the ads) and the initiative went down to massive defeat.

Yep. broked. send this country back and get a replacement, it is no longer operating within spec. Not sure it ever has, now that I think of it; but it’s been out of round since at least 1972.

So what the hell is going on, then? The most civic-minded and sensible of the 1%, such as King and Buffett, agree with losers like me. Who is Mitt Romney and the teams at Red State and NRO fighting for, exactly?

WW, King and the Gates interview, they make the point that the .01% who support Rmoney and the anti-social aspects of Obama’s regime, are not only blindly grasping, but bitter and despise everybody else; they not only want to keep all their pennies, but they want anybody below them to suffer for being morally unfit, as proven by the respective bank accounts.

Trying to fill their gaping soul-holes with cash, but it’s not enough. It’s never enough; can’t be.

Wyatt Earp: What makes a man like Ringo, Doc? What makes him do the things he does?
Doc Holliday: A man like Ringo has got a great big hole, right in the middle of him. He can never kill enough, or steal enough, or inflict enough pain to ever fill it.
Wyatt Earp: What does he need?
Doc Holliday: Revenge.
Wyatt Earp: For what?
Doc Holliday: Bein’ born.

Timely on the King link, ZRM. I’m currently reading 11/22/1963. Good shit. The man has got his writing groove back on, and it is refreshing to see him use that groove for other things than just telling great stories. Though I am glad he is doing that as well– that bad patch a decade or so ago really soured me on him for a while, but I’m glad I gave his recent stuff another shot.

Factories are okay. You never knew what you were gonna get with hand-made Twinkies.
There is much to be said for industrial consistency (even in booze) but I’m all for moonshine. (I’ll only drink it until I need glasses.)